In his first-ever interview, the sole Australian survivor of the Waco siege has revealed to 60 Minutes what really took place during the 51-day stand-off, and why he believes crazed cult leader David Koresh will one day return to Earth as the son of God.

She's going up against the most disliked presidential candidate in the history of the United States, so why isn't Hillary Clinton winning in a landslide?

It's the question that has Democratic operatives pulling out their hair this election. Going up against a candidate as deeply flawed as Donald Trump, any Democrat should be winning in a walk.

But Clinton is only a few points ahead of Trump for a very simple reason — nobody likes her very much either.

Trump is the most disliked presidential nominee in the history of polling, but Clinton is the second most disliked. People don't like her, they don't trust her and while she will be getting plenty of votes, not that many people will be too happy about it.

Who do you think will win the US election?

Donald Trump

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Hillary Clinton

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Part of it comes down to sexism. Her husband Bill can get away with being charming. Barack Obama can get away with being laid-back. Joe Biden can get away with being impassioned. But running for president as a woman is a different beast altogether.

Nobody called John Kerry shrill for raising his voice. Nobody went onto Reddit to complain about Mitt Romney's laugh. Nobody wrote news stories about what John McCain was wearing. Clinton is facing double-standards like none of her predecessors, and she has built her campaign around minimising such criticism.

But pinning Clinton's unpopularity on sexism alone is incorrect. It all comes down to trust, and Clinton’s campaign did little to fix her trust issues with the US electorate.

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Clinton's email scandal was devastating for her not because of implications of wrongdoing. It was terrible because it affirmed preconceived notions about her — that she is overly secretive, that she lives in a bubble, and that she is somehow above the law.

It didn't help that she did not treat the scandal with the weight it deserved when it first broke. It took her too long to apologise, she shifted her story around and she always seemed to have an excuse.

The FBI's reopening of the case could not have happened at a worse time for Clinton. Her standing in the polls dropped just as voters started casting early ballots, and the opaque nature of the FBI announcement allowed for all kinds of conjecture. When FBI Director James Comey closed the case yesterday, 40 million Americans had already voted.

In the end the investigation came to nothing, but the constant drip-drip of stories made it hard for Clinton to talk about policy or run a positively-themed campaign. Her caginess certainly didn't help.

Are you concerned by Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server while she was Secretary of State?

Yes

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No

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Wall Street speeches

Far more than the emails, Clinton's Wall Street speeches were behind her struggles in the primaries. By giving high-dollar speeches to loathed banks like Goldman Sachs, and refusing to release the transcripts, Clinton affirmed the notion she was the ultimate insider. Voters hate the idea that a politician is telling one thing to them, and something else to the fat cats.

It only worsened when the secrecy started to really hurt her in the polls. If keeping them a secret was so unpopular, how damaging would the transcripts be, pundits mused.

When the transcripts were finally leaked in the Wikileaks email hack of the Clinton campaign, they weren't as bad as imagined. Ironically, they came to light through a memo made by the campaign, highlighting the most politically damaging sections.

But Trump could never exploit the Wall Street speeches like Bernie Sanders could. Sanders was the everyman, a Brooklynite who grew up poor and makes do on his Senate salary. It's much harder for a billionaire to criticise Clinton for being too schmoozy with the one-percent.

Her secret sickness

If you put your symptoms into Google it will probably tell you that you have some terminal disease. If you put Hillary Clinton's symptoms into Google, the results are even more lurid.

For the last few months, the alt-right has been stirring all sorts of crazy rumours about Hillary Clinton's health — that she has Parkinson's, early onset dementia, seizures and blackouts. For much of the year such conspiracy theories belonged in the same category as the "faked moon landing". But in early September it was revealed Clinton had pneumonia, but her campaign kept it a secret.

Disclosing a pneumonia diagnosis straight away may have been harmful in the short-term, but keeping it a secret until she fainted in public was a terrible idea. If her advisers were wondering why voters don't trust Clinton, it's because her campaign doesn't trust the voters with the truth.

The 'deplorables' remark

The worst gaffes are rarely the ones made in public, but the ones made in private. Which is why a comment made by Hillary Clinton at a closed-door fundraiser in September proved so damaging.

"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables," Clinton told a fundraiser.

"The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up."

Clinton's remarks did not lose her the votes of any of these "deplorables" — they weren't supporting her anyway. But it did energise the Trump campaign and alienate independent voters.

What's worse is that it shows Clinton acting one way in public and another way behind closed doors. And gave reluctant voters another reason not to trust her.

Who had the worse scandals this election?

Donald Trump

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Hillary Clinton

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The personality problem

Any of the above scandals could be overcome, and if the polls are right, Clinton will overcome them. But Clinton's attitude to running for office have only worsened each of these gaffes and missteps.

There's many ways to get around scandal, but almost all of them require a natural charm that Clinton simply doesn't have. Clinton has always appeared irritated by accusations made against her, and her apologies have come across as overly rehearsed.

The other problem is Clinton is excessively cautious. Her campaign is notoriously risk-averse and tightly controlled. She rarely puts herself in situations where the outcome is unknown. And unlike her predecessor Barack Obama, she cannot work a room and leave the place buzzing.

Why it doesn't matter

This would all be a much bigger problem if she wasn't running against Donald Trump. While more than half of American voters distrust and dislike Hillary Clinton, people outright loathe Trump. The surge in early voting in states like Florida and Nevada favours Clinton, but they are turning out to make sure Trump never gets elected president.

The question is, if the fundamentally unpopular Clinton becomes president, how can she get re-elected against a less toxic opponent.